Is FaceTime the Worst Thing to Ever Happen to Faces?

The only time my mom and I FaceTimed, the first words out of her mouth were, “Do I look as bad as you do?” The conversation ended shortly thereafter, and we haven’t video chatted since.

I’m sure when Apple added FaceTime to the iPhone, they thought they were bestowing a gift on humanity: You can see the person you're talking to! Calling your grandmother will feel like being in the room with her! In reality, FaceTiming is about as much like actual face time as flying in a plane is like falling out of one. Not only does there not seem to be a fast-enough Internet connection in the world to keep it from freezing up, but unless you’re much less vain than I, it can make you feel pretty bad about your neck...and also your face in general.

As The New York Timesrecently reported, over 20,000 Americans got chin implants in 2011, a 71 percent jump from the previous year, when FaceTime was released. Not to go all grassy knoll on you, but I don’t think this is a coincidence.

And who can blame these chin implantees? There are few times you look worse than when you're on FaceTime. Your skin is washed out while somehow your blemishes are thrown into harsh relief. Moments ago, you had one chin, and now you have three. Besides that, everything looks sort of lumpy and odd in a way it’s hard to put your finger on, but probably has something to do with the uncanny valley hypothesis: “When human features look and move almost, but not exactly, like natural human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.”

So there’s freezing, revulsion, and chin-shaming. But the worst part is that you can’t even concentrate on what the other person is saying because a miniature version of your visage stays visible the entire time. So that instead of listening to your friend talk about how she’s doing in the Peace Corps in Senegal, you’re staring at your own face wondering, Do I really look like that? and moving the phone around to try to get yourself at a better angle. By the end of the conversation you have no idea what’s going on with the Peace Corps but are intimately aware of what you look like when you’re pretending to listen.